Brook trout.

 Snow day.  schools and many places closed in Grand Haven and along the coastline of Lake Michigan.

After a warm December the ice on Lake Michigan is beginning to freeze along the shoreline. One crystal grabs one grain of sand and the ice begins to build outward into the lake.

 

 

 

 

Our Lives Together

 

My husband, you know my love for you forever

Remains true over time and restless tides

We live and love each other in our fine house

Where we have raised our loving family                                                 

Two successful daughters on their own

Beautiful women with children of their own

Five grandchildren now grown and successful

One great grandchild, a sprightly girl with curls

Who does the splits on a balance beam.

 

Our lives blessed near the freshwater seas rolling in

And sometimes like a mirror for sky

I need you as the earth needs the sun light

And as the earth needs rain, clouds, snow and ice

We are blessed on earth, blessed and forever blessed.

 

Stay by me as you have for many years

And I will stay by you my faithful husband

Down through the passing days, months, years

We started with little and as we worked

We gained more: our house, our family and friends

It could never be better our lives together

With a love like this we shall live long lives

Together in our house by Lake Michigan

Together here and beyond our lives here.

 

                                            --Barbara Spring

 Wet in Wet

Pigments stain wet paper
Swirl out in rolling clouds
Of colors that run together
Blend ochre for antelope hides
For sand dune forms and
For the earth I roll up under my toes.
I add Paynes gray translucent as water
And a touch of vermilion for desire.

Palette and brush extend from the mazes
Of my brain and move to rhythms imbedded
In cycles of stars, the arms of
Spiral galaxies, in the dances of creation
Bright planets and singing stars
In the rolling of waves, the beating of wings
And wind sighing through green leaves of trees
And singing in gold and green grasses
I am making my wet into wet painting

--Barbara Spring

Summer

See how green breezes

Play oak leaves high

Above me.

Summer breezes touch my cheeks

Bend beach grasses

Scatter their seeds--

Sand pipers skitter across the beach

As a brown bear dances

 in my dream.

                           --Barbara Spring

Whale Watching on the Sea of Cortez

                                          Whale Watching on the Sea of Cortez 

Baja California, the long finger of land dangling into

Mexico with the Sea of Cortez on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, is full of surprise encounters. The Sea of Cortez is a playground for whales and other marine mammals.

      In La Paz, we embarked on a small cruise ship fitted out with all sorts of equipment designed to investigate this surprising environment. The trip opened worlds of wonder to us.

     The Sea Bird is operated by Lindblad Cruises, a line that specializes in ecotourism.  Our guides were specialists in the flora and fauna of Baja and though they had studied their specialties for many years, they as well as we were constantly surprised by what we encountered.

      “Look, a Blue Whale,” Steve our expert in marine mammals shouted.  “It’s the largest animal that has ever lived on earth!”

      We saw the dark, majestic body of the whale surface and then slowly sound, several times.  We watched its dorsal fin and its graceful tail disappear quite close to us.  We peered through binoculars while we waited breathlessly for it to emerge again from the mysterious waters that some call the Sea of California.

      Steve was full of information: “These waters are ll,000 feet deep at their deepest...the whales have a different song in each ocean basin... their low pitched voices can travel l500 miles...no one knows how long they live...ivory harpoons have been found in whales...best estimate..135-200 years.” 

      He told us the area is young in geological time.  Millennia ago, tectonic plates shifted separating the Baja from the mainland causing the depths of the Sea of Cortez and thrusting up the Sierra Madre Mountains on the mainland of Mexico.

      “The rocky islands you see are of volcanic origin,” he

explained.

      Just then another whale surfaced quite close to the ship “A Brydes Whale,” Steve shouted.  “I’ve never seen one before.”

      We had not either.  The Sea of Cortez is full of whales as well as twenty other species of marine mammals.  There is plenty of room for them to cruise its deep canyons and plenty of food brought up by upwelling currents.

Our scientist/guides on board seined the waters with a net to see what sort of plankton they could find. They put a drop of water under a microscope and hooked this to the t.v. in the lounge so we could see the fascinating array of life on the t.v. screen--life forms only visible when magnified. We saw the larvae of star fish and many beautiful shapes of diatoms.  I thought we might see krill, the preferred food of baleen whales, but such was not the case.  The seine net could not go deep enough to strain out krill. Our day of whale watching changed to evening as we watched the vivid colors on the rugged landscape we passed.

   The next day we saw two humpback whales spouting and sounding in unison, perhaps a mother and her calf.  We got quite close and Andrew, the ship’s underwater camera man went out in the zodiac to film them.  I gasped when I saw how close he was to the whale’s flukes when he plunged into the water.

      I asked him if he got any pictures when he was back on the Sea Bird. 

      “My heart was just pounding,” he said, “but I couldn’t

get close enough for filming...we had equipment to record their voices, but they were not vocalizing.”  

     We learned to identify whales by their spouts...these whales had V shaped spouts while the Blue Whale spouted straight up.  Gray whales have a heart shaped spout. Two Common Dolphins rode the bow wake as we cruised along. I leaned over the rail to snap photos. Toward evening the sunlight on the islands we passed turned their rose madder colors to deep royal blues as a full moon rose over them.

 We also had an underwater camera and we used it the next day to photograph California Sea Lions.

      We were up early and the sunrise shining on the islands turned them to gold. After breakfast we donned wetsuits provided by the cruise line along with fins and snorkels.

      We could hear the barking of the sea lions as they cavorted on a picturesque rocky island.  These were young males, pups, and their mothers.  We slipped into the sea and were greeted by playful sea lions under water.  They zoomed by us and peered into our masks with their large eyes.  They played. I imagined that one was dancing with me...twisting, looping, and sleek. I wished I had just some of its underwater grace. All around us were vivid flashes of bright colors and the fanciful patterns and shapes of tropical fish going about their lives around the rocky island.

      We stopped at Arroyo Blanco to kayak around the sea caves. We heard the water surge and recede, sonorous and low, boom in the caves where we paddled. Paddling close to the rocks we saw Sally Lightfoot Crabs and lizards and many types of sea birds: pelicans, blue footed boobies, osprey. On the sandy beach, small stones and shells washed in and out with the waves.

We found paddling around the islands easier than walking.

      Many varieties of cactus march up the stony hillsides of the islands we visited.  We took hikes, mindful of the thorns. These rugged islands are not an easy place to live, yet many species of plants have found a way to cling to the rocks in drought and in the rainy season.

      We were told that 99% of the living space on planet Earth is in the oceans. I felt we had only scratched the surface on this cruise yet there were mysteries and surprises abounding.  We were fortunate to see a Blue Whale, a Brydes Whale,and Humpback Whales sounding and spouting in unison.  We followed a Sperm Whale, but it was elusive. We examined minute plankton through a microscope.  We saw many dolphins and swam with California Sea Lions.  We saw tropical fish and kayaked in sea caves. What a great adventure for two land lubbers.

The Nearness of God 

See how the breeze moves through 

Every blossom and leaf. 

See how the sounds of each bird 

And insect wing sings 

In our very heart’s core. 

Under a dome of rock in a sea cave. 

Listen to the ocean roar  

Hear the whales sing through green 

Halls shot with sunlight. 

God’s majesty in all. 

--Barbara Spring 

July 14, 2020

As I sip my tea

I feel deep peace

In my place near the lake.

The beacon reflects

On still water

On days like this

It is hard to believe

 Pandemics sweep

Over the world

Angry riots far

Away today.

                                                                                            ---Barbara Spring

Great Lakes: Mourning the Losses

  

I mourn the loss of what used to be even before I was born. This was my motivation for writing The Dynamic Great Lakes. I care about the environment so much that I had to do something.
When I think of the 500-year-old white pines that used to be where I live, I feel a sadness. White pines were called white gold and used for the masts of ships, and in West Michigan, these trees rebuilt Chicago after the great fire.

When I think of the sturgeon that were killed and burned like cordwood because they fouled fishermen's nets, I want to cry.

Glacial relics remain in the dunes and wetlands such as the arctic primrose. The names of flowers are lovely: grass pink, lady's tresses, rams head lady slipper. The fragrances of these flowers are in my imagination. Very few are really found.
Few are found because many dunes  have been leveled.

When Jacques Cartier reached the Great Lakes, his men had scurvy. The Native Americans taught the French how to get vitamin C by making arbor vitae tea. The tea was made by pouring hot water over the leaves of this tree. They learned of a natural pesticide from the aroma of white spruce.

Now harmful chemicals are found in the air, water and soil and this is really something to grieve. This was my motivation for writing The Dynamic Great Lakes. I care about the environment so much that I had to do something. This book shows what some people working on grassroots committees have been able to do. It is a hopeful book. It is a beginning. Without basic knowledge about the Great Lakes it is impossible to make the right decisions about them.

Whale Watching on the Sea of Cortez

On the Sea of Cortez

Baja California, the long finger of land dangling into

Mexico with the Sea of Cortez on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, is full of surprise encounters. The Sea of Cortez is a playground for whales and other marine mammals.

      In La Paz, we embarked on the Sea Bird, a small cruise ship fitted out with all sorts of equipment designed to investigate this surprising environment. The trip opened worlds of wonder to us.

     The Sea Bird is operated by Lindblad Cruises, a line that specializes in ecotourism.  Our guides were specialists in the flora and fauna of Baja and though they had studied their specialties for many years, they as well as we were constantly surprised by what we encountered.

      “Look, a Blue Whale,” Steve our expert in marine mammals shouted.  “It’s the largest animal that has ever lived on earth!”

      We saw the dark, majestic body of the whale surface and then slowly sound, several times.  We watched its dorsal fin and its graceful tail disappear quite close to us.  We peered through binoculars while we waited breathlessly for it to emerge again from the mysterious waters that some call the Sea of California.

      Steve was full of information: “These waters are ll,000 feet deep at their deepest...the whales have a different song in each ocean basin... their low pitched voices can travel l500 miles...no one knows how long they live...ivory harpoons have been found in whales...best estimate..135-200 years.” 

      He told us the area is young in geological time.  Millennia ago, tectonic plates shifted separating the Baja from the mainland causing the depths of the Sea of Cortez and thrusting up the Sierra Madre Mountains on the mainland of Mexico.

      “The rocky islands you see are of volcanic origin,” he

explained.

      Just then another whale surfaced quite close to the ship.

      “A Bryde’s Whale,“ Steve shouted.  “I’ve never seen one before.”

      We had not either.  The Sea of Cortez is full of whales as well as twenty other species of marine mammals.  There is plenty of room for them to cruise its deep canyons and plenty of food brought up by upwelling currents. Our scientist/guides on board seined the waters with a net to see what sort of plankton they could find. They put a drop of water under a microscope and hooked this to the t.v. in the lounge so we could see the fascinating array of life on the t.v. screen--life forms only visible when magnified. We saw the larvae of star fish and many beautiful shapes of diatoms.  I thought we might see krill, the preferred food of baleen whales, but such was not the case. The seine net could not go deep enough to strain out krill.     Our day of whale watching changed to evening as we watched the vivid colors of evening on the rugged landscape we passed.     

 The next day we saw two humpback whales spouting and sounding in unison, perhaps a mother and her calf.  We got quite close and Andrew, the ship’s underwater camera man went out in the zodiac to film them.  I gasped when I saw how close he was to the whales’ flukes when he plunged into the water.

      I asked him if he got any pictures when he was back on the Sea Bird. 

      “My heart was just pounding,” he said, “but I couldn’t

get close enough for filming...we had equipment to record their voices, but they were not vocalizing .”    

     We learned to identify whales by their spouts...these whales had V shaped spouts while the Blue Whale spouted straight up.  Gray whales have a heart shaped spout. Two Common Dolphins rode the bow wake as we cruised along. I leaned over the rail to snap photos. Toward evening the sunlight on the islands we passed turned their rose madder colors to deep royal blues as a full moon rose over them.

      We also had an underwater camera and we used it the next day to photograph California Sea Lions while snorkeling.

      We were up early and the sunrise shining on the islands turned them to gold. After breakfast we donned wet suits provided by the cruise line along with fins and snorkels.

      We could hear the barking of the sea lions as they cavorted on a picturesque rocky island.  These were young males, pups, and their mothers.  We slipped into the sea and were greeted by playful sea lions under water.  They zoomed by us and peered into our masks with their large eyes.  They played. I imagined that one was dancing with me...twisting, looping, and sleek. I wished I had just some of their

underwater grace. All around us were vivid flashes of bright colors and the fanciful patterns and shapes of tropical fish going about their lives around the rocky island.

      We stopped at Arroyo Blanco to kayak around the sea caves. We heard the water surge and recede, sonorous and low, boom in the caves where we paddled. Paddling close to the rocks we saw Sally Lightfoot Crabs and lizards and many types of sea birds: pelicans, blue footed boobies, osprey. On the sandy beach, small stones and shells washed in and out with the waves.  We found paddling around the islands easier than walking.

      Many varieties of cactus march up the stony hillsides of the islands we visited.  We took hikes, mindful of the thorns. These rugged islands are not an easy place to live, yet many species of plants have found a way to cling to the rocks in drought and in the rainy season.

      We were told that 99% of the living space on planet Earth is in the oceans. I felt we had only scratched the surface on this cruise yet there were mysteries and surprises abounding.  We were fortunate to see a Blue Whale, a Bryde’s Whale, Humpback Whales sounding and spouting in unison.  We followed a Sperm Whale, but it was elusive. We examined minute plankton through a microscope.  We saw many dolphins and swam with California Sea Lions.  We saw tropical fish and kayaked in sea caves.

      We came home with a deep respect for the surprising life found in and around the Sea of Cortez.

The Return of Eagles, Ospreys, Peregrine Falcons

In 1962 Norm Spring read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.  He wondered how anyone could read the book and not do something about the harm DDT was causing to the environment. He was living right across the street from Central Park at the time and the city of Grand Haven, Michigan would spray the elm trees for Dutch Elm disease with DDT.  He was told he could move his car, but along with his wife he had two small children and the house and places where the young children played would be coated with DDT.  The problem was DDT did not kill the elm beetle. it soaked into the ground and everyone could see robins trembling in their death throes in the grass.  The spray washed down the streets and into the storm drains so DDT entered Lake Michigan where it was caught up in food chains.  The fish became highly contaminated with DDT.

 Fish eating birds such as the American Bald Eagle were affected since their eggs became thin and cracked as a result of DDT and did not hatch.  Norm went to every meeting of the Grand Haven City Council for three years and finally the Grand Haven City Council agreed to stop their DDT program.

People came from a nearby city and asked “How did you do that?” and together they formed the Michigan Pesticides Council that met at Michigan State University.  Among the members were:  Norm Spring, chairman, Joan Wolfe, ornithologists Dr. Ted Black, Dr. George Wallace, Dr. John Kitchel,  Charles Schick, Ann Van Lente, , Joseph Kleiman, Theodore Carbine.  Due to their work DDT and like pesticides were banned in Michigan in 1972 and then the ban went nation wide and Canada followed.

Today the Eagles, Ospreys and Peregrine Falcons have returned to the shores of the Great Lakes, the United States and Canada because the democratic process worked.

We see butterflies, moths and bumblebees, all part of a healthy ecosystem.

Norm was inducted into The Michigan Environmental Hall of Fame in 2014 for his work on behalf of the environment.

.

.

The Heart of a Rose

That Fragrance? The sublime some say is in the heart of a rose.  Look deep. Gaze into time and space.  Love unfolds like a lovely rose.  Love bids us welcome.  Sublime Love.

Silkie

                                                           

Silkie

I will dance down to the salty sea and return to my cradle.  Swayed in the deep, nuances of fishes surround me, nibble my heels, pass in silence.  Sun slides down through diatoms like snow, glints off gills, scales, fins, tails.  Light bejeweled with animals like flowers.  Spin drift sand conceals old coins, shells, fins, eggs, lies in ripples, troughs, caves.  My tongue knows salt, my body the cool pressure and the feathery touch of kelp.

* "The silkie be a creature strange who rises from the sea to change."

Wishing for Viridity

Wishing for Viridity

For spring to reappear. So I

Painted wildflowers with green

Leaves and stems all around

A veery’s trill opens my bluebells

Pink columbine, delicate hepatica

And nodding pitcher plants.

I want to lie down in a grassy meadow

And breathe sweet breezes this spring.

--Barbara Spring

A Sphere of Years

I am a sphere of years

Rolling on space/time’s

warp and weft.

In Chartres Cathedral

Infant Jesus holds

A golden ball in the palm of his hand

From darkness we come

And the divine child is born within

And every year is born again.

The Dynamic Great Lakes a book about changes in the Great Lakes

Praise for The Dynamic Great Lakes

 In her cautionary book, environmental activist and professor Spring enthusiastically explores the Great Lakes, and clearly explains why they should be protected. —Book Sense Nov 22 2003

This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools. —Peter Wild U.S. Water News

 Every library should have this book. —Stan Lievense, retired fish biologist MDNR

Worth reading if for no other reason than that the writing is masterfully done…reminded me a little of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. —Jonathon David Masters,

This is an impressive little book. Not quite 110 pages long, it’s a read of about an hour or so. The author has, however, managed to jam it full of facts and information about the Great Lakes. The author also sprinkles a strong environmental ethic throughout the book coupled with the belief that the democratic process can make a difference. —Bob Gross, The Oakland Press

 Spring’s handy 108-page primer about the Great Lakes provides the curious with a solid overview of the lakes including their history, physical characteristics, denizens and the threats facing them, particularly from invasive species and pollution. —Dave LeMieux, The Muskegon Chronicle

Columbia Missouri

Columbia, Mo

Does the house on Ross St remember me?

The little girl with two skinned knees?

The little girl who left her hand prints

On her sooty bedroom wall?

Does the stucco house with a screened in porch

Remember my pet turtle Winchester?

 My polliwogs that morphed into frogs?

The stairs where I would sneak along the banister

Not letting the stairs creak

And I would spy on Mom’s bridge party—

“She always wears her hair the same way” she said

And all the ladies laughed.

Does the house remember my Dad

Who gave me a puppy to love?

I named her Penny because she had

A coat the color of a new penny.

She had long ears and big brown eyes—

A cocker spaniel with a pedigree.

                                 --Barbara Spring